If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s probably an iPhone 5 texting-based scam run by people that should rightfully be trampled by irate moose.

Per the cool cats at The Mac Observer, a scam purporting to offer you the opportunity to “test and keep the New iPhone5!” began making new rounds on Thursday. iPhone users received text messages with the bogus offer, which is an effort to lure people to a website and give up personal information or some other nefarious scheme.

The scam message many of us have received:

This scam first began circulating in February, but the scumbags responsible sent out a new wave of texts today.

To recap:

– This is a scam

– Apple does not send out unannounced products for testing outside of Apple

– Even if it did decide to test its devices in this fashion, it wouldn’t do so by sending random text messages

– This scam is similar to another scam currently circulating via Twitter that purports to be from Draw Something. It is not from Draw Something, or the game’s parent company, Zynga, but it is a scam trying to get your personal information.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available and if any of you have an insight as to who’s spreading this effort around, feel free to lead your own “Frankenstein”-esque mob, complete with pitchforks and torches, to whomever is doing this so they may be hung up by their spleens and made to listen to Rebecca Black’s “Friday” on an infinite loop…

According to a recently published application discovered by Patently Apple on Thursday, Apple may be looking into a way in which cameras in iOS-based devices would snap 3D images. According to the blog, which tracks all Apple patents and applications, the technology would utilize “depth-detection sensors,” like radar and lidar, and use the latest and greatest luminance sensors to recreate an image’s color as accurately as possible. By the time the picture is taken, it’ll deliver a full 3D image.

The fact that Apple is thinking about 3D implementation on the iPhone and iPad isn’t necessarily a surprise, given the importance the third dimension has taken on across the industry. At this point, it’s hard to find a television that doesn’t come with 3D support. And across the mobile space, more and more companies are starting to integrate 3D features.

For years now, it’s been believed that Apple would bring some sort of 3D integration to the iPhone and iPad, but there hasn’t really been much talk of the camera on the devices handling the task.

Apple’s patent application, however, takes things further than just snapping an image. According to the patent, the technology can scan an object and create a 3D model on the device. It could also come with facial-gesture recognition that can detect smiling, grimacing, and frowning.

It’s just a patent application for the time being, but it could lead to something cool.

Per DigiTimes, a new report out of the Far East claims Apple is scheduled to begin mass production of a new 15-inch MacBook Pro in April, while a 13.3-inch model is rumored to enter mass production in June.

The web site reported on Thursday that, according to upstream supply chain sources, Apple is anticipating higher demand for its upcoming 13.3-inch MacBook Pro refresh than its 15-inch version.

Tipsters indicated an April production schedule for the larger version and a June schedule for production of an update to the 13.3-inch notebook. They said monthly production capacity of the 15-inch MacBook will start out at between 100,000 and 150,000 units and “rise gradually.”

Earlier this month, the same publication reported that Apple’s new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pros had entered production. The new machines are said to lack optical drives while maintaining “more advanced specs” than the MacBook Air.

Sources have separately told AppleInsider that Apple is gearing up to blur the lines between its current MacBook Air models and its pro series of laptops. It’s not yet clear, however, whether the company will revise its marketing names for the machines and collapse the two lineups under one name.

Reports also emerged on Wednesday that Intel’s next-generation Ivy Bridge chips, some of which are presumably bound for Apple’s new Macs, are scheduled to launch at the end of April. Earlier reports have claimed that Apple is aiming to launch the 15-inch MacBook Pro also by the end of next month. Intel has experienced some delays with its Ivy Bridge processors, but it remains to be seen to what extent Apple’s schedule will be affected.

Mounting evidence also suggests that Apple is preparing to upgrade its Mac displays to Retina Display quality and could do so as early as the next generation.

On Thursday, shareware developer Maintain released version 5.1.6 of CocktailCocktail (Lion Edition), the popular shareware utility program that allows for additional Mac OS X system tests. The new version, a 3 megabyte download, adds the following fixes and features:

– Addresses an issue in which the “Disable saved application states” setting may not work properly.

Cocktail 5.1.6 retails for a US$19.00 shareware registration fee and requires Mac OS X 10.7 or later to install and run.

The goal isn’t to make you paranoid (which, according to the movie “End of Days”, is just reality on a finer scale), but to help show you what’s out there.

Per Forbes, Swedish security firm Micro Systemation has posted the following video as to how quickly both iOS and Android-based devices can be cracked, the firm’s XRY 6.2 software suite cracking the device’s passcode, dumping its data to a Windows PC, decrypting it and showing tender morsels of information such as the user’s GPS location, files, call logs, contacts, messages, even a log of its keystrokes.
The report said the firm uses the same kind of exploits that jailbreakers use to gain access to the phone. Once inside, they have access to just about everything.

– Multithreaded video decoding (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux) — The video decoding pipeline is now fully multithreaded. This feature should improve the overall performance on all platforms. Note that this feature is a significant architecture change required for other future improvements.

Flash Player 11.2.202.228 requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.6 or later to install and run.

If you’ve tried the new version and have any feedback, please feel free to hurl your two cents in via the comments.

Per AppleInsider, Just weeks after releasing iPhoto 9.2.2 for OS X, Apple is close to publishing a minor update, version 9.2.3, to improve stability and address an issue where the application quits unexpectedly on Macs with multiple user accounts.

A highly reliable source told the web site on Tuesday that the new version of iPhoto is “on its way.” Since Apple has begun seeding a prerelease version of the software, it is likely to arrive within days.

iPhoto 9.2.3 will improve “overall stability” and address “an issue that could cause iPhoto to quit unexpectedly on systems with multiple user accounts,” according to documentation sent by the source. The download reportedly weighs 256.9MB.

Apple released iPhoto 9.2.2 on March 7 after unveiling the new iPad and releasing iOS 5.1. That updated allowed photos to be deleted from Photo Stream, addressed compatibility with iCloud and iOS 5 and included fixes for several issues with the application.

This month also saw the release of iPhoto for iOS. More than a million copies of the iPad and iPhone versions of Apple’s photo management software were sold in its first 10 days on the App Store.

Stay tuned for additional details and we’ll let you know the moment iPhoto 9.2.3 goes live for download.